Ascential Software bought Vality Technology, known for its data-cleansing software, in 2002. Customers say service was shaky at first, but it's improved.

You couldn't blame customers of Vality Technology for worrying when the company was bought for $92 million by Ascential Software in 2002. Many had invested more than $100,000 in Vality's complex data-cleansing software. The fear: Ascential had little experience in scrubbing data.

Today, concerns have eased. Ascential continues to invest in the data-quality suite, called QualityStage, and added a data-profiling package, which analyzes files and databases for potential quality problems. Ascential has also enhanced its product lineup with an offering that detects data-quality problems in real timeas a customer is filling out fields on a Web site, for exampleand allows for integration with applications such as customer-relationship management.

Support, shaky immediately after the buyout, has improved, customers say.

"As soon as we signed the contract [to buy Vality's software], we found out they were being bought, and we got pretty nervous," says Sergio Bouscoulet, operations manager at non-profit relief organization Save the Children, which uses QualityStage to cleanse millions of donor records. "Support went down for a period, but it's come back."

When transportation firm Landstar System looked for software to cleanse information before pumping it into a new data warehouse, the company tested how fast several vendors could get their applications up and running.

"Several of them weren't able to pass the proof-of-concept, but Ascential had no problems," says Patrick Wise, Landstar's vice president of advanced technology.

Unlike products from rivals, QualityStage uses matching algorithms that sort through a wide variety of datanot just names and addresses.

Manufacturer Schindler Elevator uses QualityStage's GeoLocator not only to correct customer addresses, but also to pinpoint their locations. That helps Schindler supervisors more efficiently plan the routes of 2,000 service technicians. Schindler senior project leader Fred Blakeley says the company now needs fewer service technicians. "The software paid for itself in less than a year." he says.

For its part, Ascential is now making it easier for customers of its integration software, DataStage, to use QualityStage. The latest version of the software allows administrators to run data integration and quality jobs from the same interface, using common commands.

Products
QualityStage consists of modules for verifying addresses worldwide, and formatting
address information so that mass mailings receive discounts from postal services.
The suite includes Geo-Locator, which appends data used for geographical location.
DataStage provides for instantaneous updates of data.

First American Real Estate Solutions
Fran Stevens
VP, Information Technologyfstevens@firstam.comProject: Uses DataStage data-integration software to pull together real-estate
transaction data from 3,000 counties nationwide and put them in a common format.

Landstar System
Patrick Wise
VP, Advanced Technology
(904) 390-6656Project: QualityStage is part of a large data-warehouse project which,
for the first time, brings together financial and other data generated by three
separate trucking operations.